Funeral customs in Vate or Efat. Old people buried alive.]

The natives of Vate or Efat, one of the New Hebrides, set up a great
wailing at a death and scratched their faces till they streamed with
blood. Bodies of the dead were buried. When a corpse was laid in the
grave, a pig was brought to the place and its head was chopped off and
thrown into the grave to be buried with the body. This, we are told,
"was supposed to prevent disease spreading to other members of the
family." Probably, in the opinion of the natives, the pig's head was a
sop thrown to the ghost to keep him from coming and fetching away other
people to deadland. With the same intention, we may take it, they buried
with the dead the cups, pillows, and other things which he had used in
his lifetime. On the top of the grave they kindled a fire to enable the
soul of the deceased to rise to the sun. If that were not done, the soul
went to the wretched regions of Pakasia down below. The old were buried
alive at their own request. It was even deemed a disgrace to the family
of an aged chief if they did not bury him alive. When an old man felt
sick and weak and thought that he was dying, he would tell his friends
to get all ready and bury him. They yielded to his wishes, dug a deep
round pit, wound a number of fine mats round his body, and lowered him
into the grave in a sitting posture. Live pigs were then brought to the
brink of the grave, and each of them was tethered by a cord to one of
the old man's arms. When the pigs had thus, as it were, been made over
to him, the cords were cut, and the animals were led away to be killed,
baked, and eaten at the funeral feast; but the souls of the pigs the old
man took away with him to the spirit land, and the more of them he took
the warmer and more gratifying was the reception he met with from the
ghosts. Having thus ensured his eternal welfare by the pig strings which
dangled at his arms, the old man was ready; more mats were laid over
him, the earth was shovelled in, and his dying groans were drowned amid
the weeping and wailing of his affectionate kinsfolk.[580]

[Sidenote: Burial and mourning customs in Aurora, one of the New
Hebrides. Behaviour of the soul at death.]

At Maewo in Aurora, one of the New Hebrides, when a death has taken
place, the body is buried in a grave near the village clubhouse. For a
hundred days afterwards the female mourners may not go into the open and
their faces may not be seen; they s